Think Metric

Eiffel Tower Units

A frame of reference, such as the weight of an elephant or the length of a school bus, spices up storytelling.  Authors incorporate frame of references to create interesting visualizations, and communication would be more bland without such tangible comparisons. 

Eiffel Tower Units are OK

When American news media company CNN reported on traveling over the Millau Viaduct, the reporter used the height of the Eiffel Tower as a reference.  The fallback units were meters not feet, with the Eiffel Tower listed as 330 m.  If CNN had been trying to avoid metric, the Eiffel Tower would have been listed as 1,083 feet. 

The take away for metrication advocates is that a frame of reference, such as the height of the Eiffel Tower, is not an attempt to avoid metric.  On the contrary, showing the Eiffel Tower along with the metric measurement of 330 m helps create a memorable visualization and foster an intuitive sense of meters. 

"Olympic Swimming Pool" is a Metric Unit!

The World Aquatics federation defines the dimensions for Olympic swimming pools.  An Olympic-sized swimming pool is 50 m in length with a width of 25 m.  The pool must have a depth of at least 2 m. 

1 Olympic swimming pool
= 50 m × 25 m × 2 m
= (50 × 25 × 2) m3
= 2,500 cubic meters
= 2,500 tons of H2O

An Olympic swimming pool equals 2,500 tons.